


What I Know About Robin

by bobafiend



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Identity Reveal, M/M, Pining, Secret Identity, Warning: Dick Grayson in a suit, mod claire betad, mod em wrote, thought I'd give you a heads up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 09:11:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18091535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobafiend/pseuds/bobafiend
Summary: From the moment that batman had formed the Team four years ago, Wally had been interested in Robin. Not in a weird way or anything, just in a friend way. The way that friends have an interest in each other. Because they’re friends.He wasn't really sure why. Maybe he just didn’t like realizing that if he made a list of things he actually knew about Robin, it would be pathetically short.Or: Wally keeps a mental list of things he knows about Robin until it all comes together.





	What I Know About Robin

**Author's Note:**

> Don’t repost anywhere please!!

From the moment that batman had formed the Team four years ago, Wally had been interested in Robin. Not in a weird way or anything, just in a friend way. 

The way that friends have an interest in each other. 

Because they’re friends.

He’d been intrigued by the character of “Robin.” The persona built around the sidekick of the big, scary Batman. He had the smile and humor of a twelve year old, but the seriousness of someone far past his age. 

Wally loved spending time with him, but he always felt like he was missing out on something important. Like the dark sunglasses that seemed permanently affixed to his face were creating more than just a physical barrier between him and his friend.

The Team as a whole knew very little about him, but for some reason it never seemed to bother any of the others are much as it bothered Wally. They trusted this guy with their identities, but not just that. They trusted him with their lives on a daily basis and they knew nothing about who he was. It wasn’t that Wally wanted to know his name, well, maybe it was. He wasn’t sure what he wanted anymore. 

Maybe he just didn’t like realizing that if he made a list of things he actually knew about Robin, it would be pathetically short.

Wally could talk about Robin for hours on end, and still paint an incomplete picture. He could tell you his favorite kind of cookie, the first word he said when he was a baby, and what movie he watched last night, but he couldn’t tell you anything of substance. 

Robin was like some kind of beautiful, confusing, surrealist painting. The kind of thing where you know you like it, and you sort of understand what it’s getting at, but its true message is still elusive. 

Not that Wally was calling Robin a beautiful painting.

Because he wasn’t. 

That would be gay. 

Which he isn’t. 

For now, Wally had to learn to be content with only knowing the little things until his teammate trusted him with more.

The little tidbits were interesting, at least.

The team was taking Miss Martian’s bioship back from a successful mission. They had saved a skyscraper worth of civilians, and for the first time in awhile they were truly proud of themselves. There was a comfortable silence in the ship. The young heroes leaned into their seats, lost in their rare absence of thoughts. 

Though the mission was successful, it was incredibly exhausting. Aching, bleeding, and too tired to celebrate, the overworked teenagers began to drift off.

It was quiet enough to hear a pin drop until something in Robin’s utility belt started beeping uncontrollably.

“On your feet! Is that a bomb?” Kaldur was at Robin’s side in a moment.

“Nah, don’t worry. Just my cell phone.” The boy wonder pulled an expensive smartphone from a pocket in this belt and chuckled a little at what he saw on the screen. He tapped a complicated password into it and began to laugh as he read the rest of the conversation. A real, true, laugh. Not just the Robin cackle that villains and heroes alike have come to fear, a real, happy laugh. It was intoxicating. (At least in Wally’s opinion).

The Team was too tired to care, opting to let Robin have his fun as long as he quieted down and stopped laughing soon; they desperately needed a nap before having to report to Batman. 

Kid Flash was not so considerate. If this was his opportunity to learn more about Robin, he wasn’t going to pass it up. Surely he wasn’t going to see anything too incriminating.

“Whatcha got there, Rob?” KF dashed over to Robin and plucked to phone out of his hand at the speed of sound.

“Who’s Stephanie? Is she your girlfriend?” Wally pondered teasingly as he read the contact name on the screen. (please don’t be his girlfriend please don’t be his girlfriend…)

“Ew, no, she’s dating my brother.” Robin scrunched up his nose and snatched his phone back from Wally.

“You have a brother? I thought you were an only child, Robin.” Aqualad inquired with a raised eyebrow. The other members of the Team turned to face Robin. He’d never mentioned a brother.

“Me? An only child?” Robin cackled, “That’s a good one.”

“Robin,” M’gann asked cautiously, “Just how many siblings do you have?”

“You aren’t ready to hear that kind of information.” Robin said in a solemn voice.

M’gann backed down, much to Wally’s frustration. Was no one else bothered by the fact that Robin had failed to mention any siblings for four entire years of knowing them?

Wally made a new point on his mental list of “Things I actually know about Robin.” Robin had siblings. A lot of them. Interesting.

-

The next day, Wally was lounging on a couch in the entrance hall to the cave. He was reading a gossip magazine and relaxing in the quiet that only filled the tower when it was empty. He flipped the page in his magazine. Apparently Bruce Wayne and his kid were going to some big gala that night. Wayne seemed like an airhead, but his teenage son was kinda fit, Wally couldn’t deny that.

Wally was thinking about how much it must suck to be in the spotlight all the time when Robin zeta-d into the cave in civilian attire. It wasn’t the hoodie and sweatpants that the team were used to seeing him in, though. Not even close.

He was absolutely rocking a solid charcoal suit with an electric blue silk button up with one too many buttons open. The sixteen-year-old had no business pulling off a suit like that! His hair was gelled back, save for a few deliberately loose strands, giving him an attractive messy look. His shoes looked more expensive than Wally’s entire supersuit. 

The look was, of course, adorned with dark sunglasses, and Wally only saw the rest of it for a moment. Robin was running into the hallway where his room was the moment the zeta tube allowed him to leave the platform. He dashed back through the cave a moment later shouting an explanation to Wally.

“Forgot my phone!” Robin laughed. And then he was gone.

Wally was the only one that had seen him come and go. He added another point to his list. Robin’s a rich kid. His brain supplied him with the additional point of “Robin looks damn fine in a suit.” He told his brain to shut up.

This was obviously a very normal thing to think about another person, wasn’t it? Sure, he thought Robin was attractive, but not in a gay way. Well, maybe a little bit in a gay way. Fuck.

Wally put the magazine down. He’d hate to be famous. That Bruce Wayne probably wasn’t able to have any secrets, him and his kid must not be able to hide anything from the media.

Wally put Dick Grayson and his gala tonight out of his head, and instead started wondering about what Robin was all dressed up for.

-

It wasn’t for another week that Wally was able to add any other points to his list. He sprinted into the back training room in the dead of the night, hoping to find it empty so he could work out to pop music and not be judged for it.

He slowed to a human-paced walk as he neared the double doors to the room, but he wasn’t alone. What kind of idiot worked out at three in the morning? (Other than him, of course.)

The speedster pushed open the doors and heard Beyonce faintly playing from a portable speaker on the ground propped up by a water bottle. He scanned the room, finding nothing until he looked… up?

And there was Robin, gracefully swinging and flipping from ropes hung from the rafters in the high ceilings of the cave. 

Wally was entranced by the movement of his friend. He was throwing himself into everything he was doing, and Wally had never seen him move that way before. Sweat glistened across his bare arms and seeped into his tank top, but he didn’t slip. He pushed on.

They weren’t practical moves for a vigilante, they weren’t threatening, they were beautiful. Robin glided through the air like his namesake, he swung and flipped and flew with the fluid motions of a performer, flawless from the moment Wally walked in to the moment he touched down.

“What has you up so late?” Robin must have sensed Wally enter the room before as he didn’t seem very surprised to see the other boy when he landed. He wiped sweat off of his forehead with the back of his hand. He sounded slightly out of breath, and Wally found that distracting.

“I was going to work, I mean work out! Yeah, work out.” Wally wasn’t sure where his voice went, but he was pretty sure he was talking at superspeed anyways so it didn’t matter.

“Walls? You okay, man?” Robin put a hand on his shoulder, confirming the theory that he’d been talking a little too fast.

“Yeah. Yeah I’m fine!” Robin’s hand was suddenly as distracting as his voice. Wally was Not Fine.

“Where did you learn to do stuff like that? It was pretty cool.” It was so much more than pretty cool. It was… beautiful? Stunning? Mesmerizing? None of these words seemed to fit quite right. He didn’t have the courage to say any of them anyways.

“I grew up in a circus.” Robin spoke softer than Wally had ever heard the energetic teen.

“Really?”

“Yeah. I was an acrobat.” Robin’s demeanor changed suddenly, his shoulders dropped like something heavy had been dropped on them. He wiped his eyes. Was he crying?

Having no idea how to respond, Wally tentatively pulled the other boy into a hug. He wasn’t sure if the motion would be welcome, but Robin tucked himself into Wally’s chest and they stood like that for a moment as “Gift from Virgo” by Beyonce hummed through the empty room.

Something about it felt comfortable and intimate. It was foreign, but it fit. Wally realized with a bit of a panic that he might be falling for his best friend.

Not wanting to think about that at the moment, Wally just stood there and held him. Listening to the words of the song, rubbing small circles on his friends back, and adding another few items to the list. Robin was an acrobat, Robin likes Beyonce, and Robin fits perfectly when I hug him.

-

Robin made an effort to seek Wally out the next morning. There was no one else in the living room besides Superboy, and he seemed immersed in the newspaper he was reading. The Daily Planet, was it? This guy had the morning habits of a forty year old.

“Walls?” Wally felt a gentle hand on his shoulder as he was making some coffee for himself, and he turned around to find Robin sporting the same quiet demeanor from the previous night.

“What’s up Rob?”

“I wanted to say sorry for last night,”

“There’s nothing to apologize for, have you, uh, recovered?”

“Yeah! I’m doing a lot better now.” Well that’s good to hear.

“Hey, if you ever need someone again, you can always, you know,”

“Thanks, Wally. It was nice.” Robin gave him a signature toothy grin, and without warning began a series of back handsprings out of the room. Wally may or may not have let a small chuckle and sigh slip past his lips.

He took a large sip of his coffee as Superboy spoke up.

“What, did y’all fuck or something?” Wally abruptly spit out his coffee.

Wally learned that Robin is a harbinger of chaos, but this information wasn’t new. He added it to the list anyways.

-

Wally was watching TV on the couch of his aunt and uncle’s house when a knock came at the door.

“Hey Wally, could you see who that is?” Aunt Iris called from upstairs.

“Sure!” He hollered back.

He unlatched to door and pulled it open to find a very familiar pair of sunglasses above an equally familiar mischievous smile.

“Rob?”

“Batman’s finally agreed to let me tell you who I am,” Robin motioned for Wally to follow him, “Come on!” Holy shit. This is what Wally had wanted from the day the Team was formed. Batman finally agreed to it? Wally broke out into a smile equal to Robin’s.

“Bye guys, going out with friends!” He shouted back into the house, closing the door before he heard a response.

“Where are we going?” Robin only cackled in response and took off running, not that the speedster had any trouble keeping up but, y’know, still annoying. Still Robin.

Robin slid to a halt in front of the Central City zeta tube location. The boys stepped onto the platform, and Robin asked it to take them to the batcave. Wally only had enough time to shoot his friend a disbelieving look before they disintegrated into light, and were teleported to their destination.

Wally had never seen something so on-brand of the Gotham Bat. It was an actual cave with actual rocks and actual bats. Are you kidding me? A little part of Wally wished that his own aesthetic could be so extra, but then he figured it must get annoying to clean all the bat poop. And what would Wally’s aesthetic even be? Lightning bolts? That sounds dangerous.

He mentally chides himself. He’s about to find out the secret identity of his best friend of four years, Robin, the guy he has a crush on, and he’s thinking about lightning? Get it together, man.

Robin lifts his hands to his face to remove his sunglasses and-

“Holy shit you’re Dick Grayson”

Robin laughs, and everything Wally has ever learned about his friend clicks into place. Rich kid acrobat from Gotham with a ton of siblings? How had he not see this before? A million thoughts rush through his head at super speed, but then Robin, no, DICK, steps a little closer and his thoughts narrow down to one.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments, I’ll read all of them! You can find me on tumblr @ robin-nightwing


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